The disclosure relates to an interior paneling part with an airbag door-flap for a motor vehicle with an airbag system.
Airbag door-flaps in modern airbag systems are integrated into the interior paneling and are connected by hinge solutions to the interior paneling parts. As a result, it succeeds in opening up the airbag door-flaps upon the deployment of the airbag, and the flaps are held at the same time by the hinge and are thus, not flung into the passenger compartment, where they can, uncontrolled, injure the vehicle passengers.
Diverse technologies for airbag door-flaps and reinforcements for the hinge area are known. For example, airbag door-flaps are provided as metal plates affixed to a carrier part/substrate, Alternatively, airbag door-flaps are made of soft material welded by injection molding to the carrier part/substrate, sprayed-on fabric, or sprayed-on metal systems.
The present invention can be applied to airbag door-flaps in airbag systems that are connected to the interior paneling part by means of a flexible hinge solution of the type of a strap hinge. In order to ensure the functional opening and swinging out of the airbag door-flaps, an elongation of the type of an extra length for the strap hinge is required in the hinge area. The rotation of the airbag door-flap is made possible by lengthening the strap hinge, which is not molded.
In prior art, for example, solutions are known in which a cable in the area concerned allows the free movement of the airbag door-flap on an interior paneling part, such as an instrument panel, for instance. At the same time, the necessary additional cable length is released by means of breaking off a rigid pin.
These and similar hinge solutions are disclosed, for example, in EP 1062127 B1, FR 2957871 B1, GB 2438748 B, WO 03082632 A2, and WO 03082635 A2. In addition, in DE 102006049316 A1, an interior paneling part for a motor vehicle is disclosed, in which flexible support means are provided for the airbag door-flap, which exhibit side areas that can be unfolded and which limit the movement of the opening airbag door-flap.
An airbag door-flap on an instrument panel is disclosed in WO 2007147966 A2, which is held by means of a hinge made of flexible material. The flexible material can be made out of cloth or a knit and the lengthening of the hinge is furnished by a plurality of folds in the flat, flexible material.
The drawback to airbag systems with stiff, metal connections lies in their weight and they require a form-fit connection to the carrier part in order to avoid deformation. These systems consequently require a pre-formed hinge and/or a mold in order to achieve the elasticity necessary to open a door flap. The known flexible hinge solutions have the disadvantage that elongation of the flexible hinge material by means of folds or bulges makes it difficult to achieve precise and reliably predictable lengthening, so that the hinge effect frequently cannot be designed to be sufficiently reproducible.